Sagara wrote:End result, when the brutal climb of MoP came, guilds weren't ready, and it's now we realise exactly how things had lapsed.

Opinions?

My thought. Same shit, different expansion. Going into TBC raids were ruined forever by being 25 man. Going into WotLK raids were ruined forever with having a 10s variant. Going into Cataclysm raids were ruined forever by not having separate lockouts for 10s and 25s. Now riding is ruined forever because it is harder.

We live in a society where people born on third base constantly try to steal second, yet we expect people born with two strikes against them to hit a homerun on the first pitch.

Sagara wrote:Pet theory of mine: guilds have face a somewhat easier barrier in Ds and maybe before. Along the way, some people joined guilds, people that never faced the walls many among is have had. Also, some among us mayhave changed a bit, due to responsibilties or tastes.

End result, when the brutal climb of MoP came, guilds weren't ready, and it's now we realise exactly how things had lapsed.

Opinions?

Could be, not sure how that helps business though.

Most of my old guild has quit, others are in the bubble. Even after transferring to AP, I'm still on the bubble.

You're talking about a realm first lvl 25 guild, a guild that used to run two raids, that was constantly in top 10 server wise during normal progression (but we would ease off once heroics would come in)...

Klaudandus wrote:Most of my old guild has quit, others are in the bubble. Even after transferring to AP, I'm still on the bubble.

To be honest your guild sounds like it had issues long before this came out.

To improve, my raiders were pretty much told to do stuff that they had no real interest in, be it lfr or dailies (to get the rep), but also was said that this was optional... Some tried and got burned out and quit... Others didnt bother and were accused of holding the team back.

Who told them to do stuff they didn't want to do? And who accused them of holding back the team? If members of your guild were accusing players of holding them back there were much deeper problems than you might want to admit.

After a bit of debate I've held firm on my "don't do shit you don't want to do" mindset for this expansion and it seems to have worked out pretty okay.

We live in a society where people born on third base constantly try to steal second, yet we expect people born with two strikes against them to hit a homerun on the first pitch.

From reading the frustrations thread you said that you were getting Garalon to 3% before enrage, my point is that there may have been things your team could have done differently to beat the counter. Were you three-healing when you could have two-healed? Was the DPS coming to the raid prepared? (And by prepared I mean was everyone pulling their weight, using their glyphs/talents/gems/reforges appropriately?) Because even at the gear level you're telling us is there (some MSV with some LFR. even completely discounting Rep/Valor items) the boss will have been killable.

I definitely understand where the frustration is coming in, but don't let the frustration distract you from what the real problems are and were. Something could have been changed to secure your kill sooner.

Last edited by Bellanka on Wed Mar 20, 2013 11:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

Bellanka wrote:tl;dr: If you can't dunk the ball the answer isn't to lower the hoop, it's to work on your jump.

But if you are 5'2" that ain't gonna work.

That sounds like an excuse to not even bother trying

Also, your height isn't in your control ... your ability to improve, improvise, and inspire others to do the same is.

Yes and no.. time, inherit skill, and commitment are all factors that can limit growth. Telling a person to get better and grind 1000 valor every week isn't always reasonable, and needs to be part of realistic expectations for guild progression. If you guild has a shallow "improvement" scale, then nerfs or overgearing are going to need to make up the difference.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Klaudandus wrote:Most of my old guild has quit, others are in the bubble. Even after transferring to AP, I'm still on the bubble.

To be honest your guild sounds like it had issues long before this came out.

Every guild has problems... in our case, T14 just aggravated them and made them more obvious...

Bellanka wrote:From reading the frustrations thread you said that you were getting Garalon to 3% before enrage, my point is that there may have been things your team could have done differently to beat the counter.

And it was some newish members that started everything to be honest... thing is, some of our older raiders had to step down from the raiding scene or cut back (because they had a new kid, or changed jobs), we brought new people into the raid, and some of the older raiders just either didnt like the dailies or couldnt do them, and the newish people were like "c'mon, step it up!"

To be honest, Garalon was killable at the time we raided him, with the gear we had, we just needed some extra tweaks, maybe a piece of gear, or maybe just better luck with garalon and whichever leg he spawns, or just a slightly cleaner execution.

But we did hit that wall right before x-mas break, during the x-mas break tempers flared up, we got poached, the replacements started bickering... at one point we had to regress because we were having problems just trying to get to garalon...

I still believe had we killed Garalon, things would have turned out better.

halabar wrote:Yes and no.. time, inherit skill, and commitment are all factors that can limit growth. Telling a person to get better and grind 1000 valor every week isn't always reasonable, and needs to be part of realistic expectations for guild progression. If you guild has a shallow "improvement" scale, then nerfs or overgearing are going to need to make up the difference.

I never said someone should grind valor. Far from it, I despise their current model of dailies and reputation. (And finally got a few of mine to exalted thanks to the Insignias that Warscouts and Warbringers are dropping.)

But on the matter of inherent skill and commitment ... skill is something that can be worked at, and no one is expecting anyone to become a WoW pro overnight. You may not get something naturally, but with practice you can improve if you want to and put in the effort. If you are on a raid team, and the entire team has the same goals, then there is already a commitment. You have 9-24+ other people relying on you to pull your weight. If you can't commit to playing up to your team's level, either through reading class forums, using AMR for your reforging/gemming, or asking for help from other people of your class/spec, then SHOULD you have a reasonable expectation of progression through difficult fights?

I don't think so at all.

T15 isn't requiring bleeding edge precision gameplay to progress through normals. It's requiring people to think and act and use their class appropriately. Previous tiers were easier, without argument, but the current tear is more about using the skills you learned in previous tiers and applying them, about knowing your class, and rewarding you for playing well. The more people you have who don't do this, the more the ones that do will need to outgear the fight to carry them. This has always been the case. T15 is just making it more obvious.

halabar wrote:Yes and no.. time, inherit skill, and commitment are all factors that can limit growth. Telling a person to get better and grind 1000 valor every week isn't always reasonable, and needs to be part of realistic expectations for guild progression. If you guild has a shallow "improvement" scale, then nerfs or overgearing are going to need to make up the difference.

I never said someone should grind valor. Far from it, I despise their current model of dailies and reputation. (And finally got a few of mine to exalted thanks to the Insignias that Warscouts and Warbringers are dropping.)

But on the matter of inherent skill and commitment ... skill is something that can be worked at, and no one is expecting anyone to become a WoW pro overnight. You may not get something naturally, but with practice you can improve if you want to and put in the effort. If you are on a raid team, and the entire team has the same goals, then there is already a commitment. You have 9-24+ other people relying on you to pull your weight. If you can't commit to playing up to your team's level, either through reading class forums, using AMR for your reforging/gemming, or asking for help from other people of your class/spec, then SHOULD you have a reasonable expectation of progression through difficult fights?

Let me put it this way... the more casual the raid team, the less commitment you can expect from people.

And in a sick twist of Blizzfate, the more casual the team, the more things like grinding valor for gear become important, as gearing as a means of progression takes on greater significance if skill gain isn't going to fill the gap.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

halabar wrote:Yes and no.. time, inherit skill, and commitment are all factors that can limit growth. Telling a person to get better and grind 1000 valor every week isn't always reasonable, and needs to be part of realistic expectations for guild progression. If you guild has a shallow "improvement" scale, then nerfs or overgearing are going to need to make up the difference.

I never said someone should grind valor. Far from it, I despise their current model of dailies and reputation. (And finally got a few of mine to exalted thanks to the Insignias that Warscouts and Warbringers are dropping.)

But on the matter of inherent skill and commitment ... skill is something that can be worked at, and no one is expecting anyone to become a WoW pro overnight. You may not get something naturally, but with practice you can improve if you want to and put in the effort. If you are on a raid team, and the entire team has the same goals, then there is already a commitment. You have 9-24+ other people relying on you to pull your weight. If you can't commit to playing up to your team's level, either through reading class forums, using AMR for your reforging/gemming, or asking for help from other people of your class/spec, then SHOULD you have a reasonable expectation of progression through difficult fights?

Let me put it this way... the more casual the raid team, the less commitment you can expect from people.

And in a sick twist of Blizzfate, the more casual the team, the more things like grinding valor for gear become important, as gearing as a means of progression takes on greater significance if skill gain isn't going to fill the gap.

You're saying casual, but when you reach the level non-committal/Friends&family you're not a casual raider, you're a friends&family gamer.

If you don't want to commit, you have LFR.

If you want to raid, you have to commit to it on SOME level. If you are a part of a raid team, you have a responsibility and a commitment to other people there. Their time is just as valuable as yours. If you don't want to, then LFR is your playground and your expectations are out of whack.

halabar wrote:Let me put it this way... the more casual the raid team, the less commitment you can expect from people.

And in a sick twist of Blizzfate, the more casual the team, the more things like grinding valor for gear become important, as gearing as a means of progression takes on greater significance if skill gain isn't going to fill the gap.

You're saying casual, but when you reach the level non-committal/Friends&family you're not a casual raider, you're a friends&family gamer.

If you don't want to commit, you have LFR.

If you want to raid, you have to commit to it on SOME level. If you are a part of a raid team, you have a responsibility and a commitment to other people there. Their time is just as valuable as yours. If you don't want to, then LFR is your playground and your expectations are out of whack.

Well, it's not my commitment that's the issue, it's the 8 or so I question on "my" raid team. Some of it is inexperience, some is just flat out lack of commitment.

Remains to be seen how that flushes out, and how the RL will manage poor performance.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Let me put it this way... the more casual the raid team, the less commitment you can expect from people.

That's getting to the point of using the word "casual" to mean something else entirely.

The more casual you are, the more commitment you need and should expect from people. Unlike others, you need to be 100% on point in using limited time effectively. If you're interested in keeping pace (not everyone is), you will also need to stop farming easy bosses and make the call to extend lockouts to push bosses you have adequate gear for and rely on strategy and practice sooner.

Remains to be seen how that flushes out, and how the RL will manage poor performance.

Honestly, the RL has very little control at that point. A culture change has to come from within, from other members of the guild pushing each other. Especially in the current raid environment, when chances are, getting replacements is going to be a daunting task, so people are happy to stay complacent knowing their raid spots are all but assured while they kill themselves watching American Idol.

Bellanka wrote:You're saying casual, but when you reach the level non-committal/Friends&family you're not a casual raider, you're a friends&family gamer.

If you don't want to commit, you have LFR.If you want to raid, you have to commit to it on SOME level. If you are a part of a raid team, you have a responsibility and a commitment to other people there. Their time is just as valuable as yours. If you don't want to, then LFR is your playground and your expectations are out of whack.

Let me quote this and add bold as it has caught perfectly my point of view.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

Darielle wrote:Especially in the current raid environment, when chances are, getting replacements is going to be a daunting task, so people are happy to stay complacent knowing their raid spots are all but assured while they kill themselves watching American Idol.

This is so true, so depressingly, alcoholism-inducingly true.

EDIT: I mean the nightmare that is recruiting. Although American Idol is equally appropriate for inducing alcoholism.

Promdates wrote:This can honestly be said for everything up until probably Ji-Kun/Durumu/Primo. There's no real "gear checks" in normal.

On Turtle, if you don't have one shell down by the first breath, you will wipe. It's not much of a gear check, but it's not necessarily trivial either. On Maeg if heads don't die by the 5th breath, bad things happen. Again, not much of a gear check, but it is there.

I think too much emphasis is put on everyone in a raid needing to pull their weight.Yes, of course, you need to commit, and thats something that I think we can all agree on - but when a developer (team) chooses where to set the bar, do you really feel that the bar should be set so only guilds where everyone moves above the current average can be allowed to down bosses?(Using average as the average of "output" in both damage/healing and moving out of the fire of the raiding population - raiding population being those that raid in an organized group regularly)

The average raider and the average raider expectation has been set by previous expansions. Yes I liked TBC a lot - also because the tiers weren't as such released consecutively (ignoring buggy, unbeatable encounters and sunwell which was a "filler"), so you started doing heroics, then moved on to karazhan, from there to gruul, to maggy, and then SSC, TK then hyjal and BT.That progression path did have problems - especially for lower progressed guilds in the form of feeder guilds.MoP has shown the same tendency - the skilled people (or rather the ones that think they are skilled - true or not) move up. The age of the game also shows in lack of recruits - many of the older player sthat saw TBC when current (the only similar expansion in terms of difficulty) have moved on to being more casual about their playing (casual as in the textbook definition, not as in unskilled or lacking commitment), and the younger people tend to think of themselves as gifts from the titans to any raid group - some have more and some less skill.

The bar set by blizzard previously needs to be raised incrementally or it is devastating to existing guilds - I agree, just because you did well in Cata doesn't mean you should be doing well in MoP, but add in raider entropy from the simple fact that the older you get, the greater the number of raiders will establish families with responsibilities to them, to jobs (by advancing in a career) or other RL stuff (like social events, activism in various areas) means that as raiders age, they do gain more skill (hopefully they get better with time), but they also have a higher "risk" of not being able to commit as much time as previously.

Basically, what I'm saying is, that what was good design in 2006/7 isn't good design in 2012/3, unless you are making a product aimed at the same age group in both cases - and if so, then its still not good design here, because, yes, the younger population feels more entitled, due to the general way the world has gone.

Case in point, Nintendohard games don't exist in general anymore, the ones that do go that route do so specifically to make a point. Heck Super Mario is about as easy as it gets these days with save points and many other features - all due to the way gaming has evolved as well, with more games being longer, and being consumed at a slower pace and in small chunks.

My point is, that a lot of the rhethoric I'm seeing in the arguments, is based on the elite few skilled, and then the masses, where the masses should just have to "get better" - or in other words become part of the elite few, if they want to not get aggravted by not downing bosses - because, lets face it, the reason raiders expect to down bosses, is due to the game teaching them that that is what should happen - which results in less patience for working on bosses and a greater mobility in moving up to a guild that already downed a boss (that can carry you iow, for a lot of those moving on).

When a guild didn't finish up on the previous tier, it was just a question of farming 5man for a) upgrades, b)Justice for moar upgrades. And if that bothered you, you could always just return to the nerfed raid of the previous tier.

It's going to happen this time around as well - once all 4 wings will be open, it'll be failry easy to stock up on 502 gear and the rep to buy a smattering of 522 Valor pieces. The critical difference is the time lapse. It's going to be 4 more weeks until the entire LFR is available. Until then, guilds are stuck with the "nerfed T14 raid" solution. And if guilds liked to do 5man better (or farm justice), well, though luck.

Going on a limb now - If I were to say "The entire problem could have been solved by making T14 Valor gear unlinked from rep and/or Justice-based, and/or by adding 5-man instances that dropped T14 equivalent?", what would your answer be?

When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.

Sagara wrote:Going on a limb now - If I were to say "The entire problem could have been solved by making T14 Valor gear unlinked from rep and/or Justice-based, and/or by adding 5-man instances that dropped T14 equivalent?", what would your answer be?

That I'm not sure Blizzard actually thinks there is a problem (or if they do, it's a different problem). I believe they are trying to change the entire direction of their game away from what it has been for about an expansion and a half (including one where large numbers of players apparently started).

What do you mean by heavily gated for T15 valor gear? The Neck is available right away, rings/trinkets unlock VERY quickly even if you're only doing LFR. Legs/Capes not too long after. Even if you're capping valor, you'll be able to afford the items when you unlock them. Again, just through LFR rep gains and not counting the Shan'ze or whatever stone weekly quests.

Also, it made accessing T14 Valor gear not only easier (double rep on ALL characters once one of yours hits revered), but cheaper by half. Alternate progression routes (Dungeons/Scenarios/Farm/Insignias) for unlocking reputations exist now. It made that gear far more accessible.

EDIT: Also wanted to clarify, I almost *never* did dailies, and I loathe the current way they're used. The only piece of Valor gear I've actively sought and bought was the Shado Pan trinket.

What do you mean by heavily gated for T15 valor gear? The Neck is available right away, rings/trinkets unlock VERY quickly even if you're only doing LFR. Legs/Capes not too long after. Even if you're capping valor, you'll be able to afford the items when you unlock them. Again, just through LFR rep gains and not counting the Shan'ze or whatever stone weekly quests.

Also, it made accessing T14 Valor gear not only easier (double rep on ALL characters once one of yours hits revered), but cheaper by half. Alternate progression routes (Dungeons/Scenarios/Farm/Insignias) for unlocking reputations exist now. It made that gear far more accessible.

EDIT: Also wanted to clarify, I almost *never* did dailies, and I loathe the current way they're used. The only piece of Valor gear I've actively sought and bought was the Shado Pan trinket.

The question is degrees. All the other tiers I mentionned, you could hit LFG on patch day and deck yourself in loot equivalent to the previous tier in a matter of hours.

What is the current fastest way to 496 ilvl for a guild that was, say, at 8/16 on patch day? Let's say they're in the late 480's (I have no idea how realistic that is, btw).Week 1 - Valor for the Shado-pan neck, T14 LFR, dailies for Sunreaver/Silverwing belt, 5.0 & 5.1 Valor rewards. - Valor is here the bottleneck. You'll probably have the opportunity to buy 2 pieces, the neck and something else, possibly from the 5.1 factions, or save for Week 2Week 2 - add LFR 1st wing, and thus the ring and wrists from the Shado-pan if you trahs farm a bit (if you had stocked up on valor), the Revered rewards from the Sunreaver/Silverwing thingie (who do cost Valor)Week 3 - LFR 2nd wing, no more from the Shado-pan, the Exalted pieces from the Sunreaver/Silverwing

That's what I was talking about: Relatively speaking, it is harder to "catch-up" than at any point since Ulduar. And from what I'm hearing, this could be the root of the problem - if you're lagging behind in T14, that lag will carry over much longer than in Tier 9/10/12/13, where it would disappear nearly overnight.

Last edited by Sagara on Thu Mar 21, 2013 7:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.